Attended
AI final 1994
AI final 1996
Munster final 2009
On tv
FA cup semi final 1989
Euros v Holland 1988
A handful of personal ones hurt a lot more than those.
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Love how this thread went from discussing how capitalism is destroying many sports, like it destroyed music and the housing markets etc, to the most disappointing sporting moments. Here’s mine.
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AI Final 2018. Loved that team. Most enjoyable summer of my life watching the Galway hurlers all over the country. Finally got us to the summit in ‘17. We didn’t deserve it at all on the day. But sport like life doesn’t work that way sometimes. Canning lands that free and we do a back to back again.
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Galway vs Donegal in 2003. Beaten by a mediocre team after a replay. The swash was gone from the buckle. We’re still in the wilderness since that day.
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vs Tipp in 2010. A long forgotten game. But a brilliant one. Games between these two later in the decade have overshadowed it. Galway were leading going down the stretch. Ollie canning had Eoin Kelly in his pocket as per usual. Kelly commits a cowardly trampish belt on canning and Tipp win it by a point. Still remember the final free taken by Ger Farragher. It fell to Kevin Hynes in the parallelogram. Four tipp defenders commit an act of GBH on him. Rather than blow for the penalty, the ref chickens out and calls full time. I didn’t speak for an hour afterwards.
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Sonia in Sydney 2000. Robbed by a classless drug cheat.
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aguero 2013. A parasitic entity was born.
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94 all Ireland hurling final
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96 all Ireland hurling final
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2018 champions league final
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Stevie slipping
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2009 all Ireland semi final vs Tipperary
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I would have thought 1998 v Kilkenny, 2006 v Cork, 2007 v Limerick and 2016 v Kilkenny as more devastating defeats than any of those.
Blow outs are worse in one way but are ultimately not near as disappointing as the narrow defeats.
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They would if FIFA would let them, at least the LigaMX would. Mexican teams make more money playing in the US than they do in Mexico, the Mexican national team already plays more friendlies in the US than they do in Mexico, they would play their competitive home games there too if they could.
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All Galway hurling ones for me. Losing to fcuking Cark.
Except the WC rugby at Lansdowne when we nearly bate the Aussies. I was there. That was an absolute sickener.
Leeds losing to the huns in 92 also. (I was also there)
Seamus Shinnors must be up there.
I don’t get that upset anymore. The losses under McIntyre were reddening, but now I just enjoy it when we turn up , win lose or draw.
JC retiring was a great sporting disappointment.
Following Galway, you wouldn’t really know where to start.
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Rangers’ Champions League campaign in 1992/93 was some rollercoaster ride. It was like football’s Grim Reaper was stalking all Irish Catholics, and he was going to, maybe not kill us all, but definitely humiliate us all forever and leave us prostrate at his feet.
That Rangers team was gloriously stereotypical in their Ulster-Scotch-English-British-Loyalism. They were like the sporting wing of the UDR, a team of Lee Cleggs.
Mark Hateley had the face of a British Army squaddie who spent his down time listening to satanic heavy metal music and riding 45 year old women before murdering them. Iain Durrant (pronounced Jew-rant) had the face of a topless, sunburnt fella wearing Union Jack shorts and drinking a can of McEwans on a very hot 12th of July who gets water cannoned by the RUC. So did Ian Ferguson, without the sunburn. Richard Gough’s jawline appeared to be hewn from oak panels from a Free Presbyterian church in some deathly dour Ayrshire town. Andy Goram, the immovable object like the statue of Carson at Stormont, except when he’d pull of yet another miracle save. John “Bomber” Brown, not in the Ra, but possibly responsible for the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Ally McCoist, the grinning Protestant hitman, football’s Ian Paisley, maybe Ian Paisley Junior actually.
It was obvious from early on their name was on Old Big Ears. The goals they would get. John Lukic throwing the ball into his own net. John Lukic spilling the ball straight to Ally McCoist in the six yard box. Mark Hateley turning and nearly bursting the Elland Road net from 25 yards on the bounce, like a mortar shell. Hateley floating a laser guided missile of cross for McCoist to Keith Houchen home.
When Marseille came to Ibrox they humbled Rangers. It was hilarious. Then Rangers pulled a rabbit out of the hat with a cannoball of a header by some pox of a sub called Gary McSwegan. Hateley nodding home the equaliser was completely inevitable after that. Graham Roberts might as well have been there in a red goalkeeper top conducting an imaginary Loyalist flute band.
The poxy Rangers-biased Scottish commentaries UTV would broadcast. The fucking poxy goals they got on that run, against CSKA Moscow in Germany, away to Bruges, especially at home to Bruges on Paddy’s night when some pox of a right back called Scott Nisbet hit a deflected cross which seemed to be remote controlled like a Shane Warne operated drone football which made the baldy midget of a goalkeeper look like a lad being knocked off his feet by a Chilean earthquake. I got a serious flu by midnight that night after playing football out on the street in the dark straight after this game and I blame the stress of Rangers’ impending European Cup triumph.
Then there was Durrant’s rocket in Marseille after which it was obvious they were going to win it all.
There was some amount of resigned fear in Irish Catholic heartlands the night they played the final round of games. Marseille scored early away to Bruges and Rangers somehow fluffed their lines at home to CSKA Moscow. The relief was palpable. A great weight had been lifted. Then it came out Marseille were in trouble for match fixing and there was talk for a short while of Rangers getting their place. UEFA finally found the stake to put through the bastards’ heart and allowed Marseille play the final. The nightmares of Rangers lifting the European Cup that night in Munich still occasionally surface.
I miss those unmistakably hunnish bastards and the utter fear they instilled.
@mickee321 needs to do a podcast on this.
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This bit. I am still very emotionally attached to the Waterford senior hurling dream. I would love to see us win the All Ireland before I pass into the next world. But I have come to realise that it won’t make my life any better or worse. I remember someone telling me that they’d seen me the morning of the 2008 All Ireland Final in my Waterford clobber and then when they saw the battering we got they felt so sorry for me.
Me? I felt very sorry for myself and pulled the covers over my head for an extra hour the next morning, then I got up and took the blue and white bunting down off the house and got on with life.
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Were you aiming for the post?
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Things peaked in the time when I was young and enjoyed them seems to be the theme of this thread.
I think football peaked when Liverpool had fowler. Doesn’t make it remotely true though
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I often make that point about BDO darts. It’s commonly thought that the golden era was the 1980s but for me the golden era is now, even though the BDO no longer exists. The recent 2023 WDF championship broadcast on YouTube was the pinnacle of the sport, ever.
The standard is better, the characters are better (I must have a Google to see who they are), the coverage is better, the interest is greater.
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Thanks for that cracking post. The first European competition I can really remember. 
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Gary Mc fucking Swegan 
I forgot he existed, that was a great post @cheasty.
Those jerseys were iconic, Rangers, Marseille, Leeds. Incredible.
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Its a shit league although most football leagues are dominated by two teams for a number of years. This is replicated all over europe.
Between 92/93 - 2003/04, Man Utd and Arsenal shared the league titles with one exception, Blackburn Rovers in 94/95. From 04/05 Man Utd and Chelsea shared the league with a few exceptions Leicester once and Man City who were emerging. From 2017/18 to date Man City have won the league with one exception Liverpool in 19/20
From 92/2004 Rosenborg won 13 titles on the trot.
Between 2012/20, Juventus won 9 leagues on the trot.
In the 19 years from 2004/05. Barcelona and Real Madrid have shared the league with two exception both won by Athletico Madrid.
In the 23 years from 94/95 Panathinaikos and Olympiacos have shared the leagues.
Since 1994 only Celtic or Rangers have won the scottish league.
I could go on. League Football is shite. CL is boring until the semi finals. The championship in england is more exciting than the premier league.
A few years ago I was thought if it wasnt for the euros and the world cup I might give up on soccer altogether but then I was reborn.
I think Damian Duff was correct when he said the LOI was the best league in the world. Its growing massive. I would suggest that lads start going to games and bring their kids.
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Your argument was going well till you mentioned LOI as an outlier where Shamrock are going for 5 in a row
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Its the rebirth of the LOI that I was referring to. Its very exciting. I only listen to Morning Ireland to hear the luscious tone of Samatha Libreri talking seductively about Rovers while Gaving Jennings slups on his tea.
Mysel and browny went on the beer the whole way up on the bus, across on the ferry and on into Leeds. We spent the day messing and generally having a ball. Culminated in us as two teenagers too young to legally drink in the pub up the hill. Some crowd of jovial enough locals said “green or orange?”
“Green as the hills” says browny
Cue several choruses of “Fenian bastards” and “no surrender to the IRA” albeit good natured enough.
We slunk into the corner and drank with two Welsh lads who’d told their wives they were going down to the local for a pint
“They’d fucking murder us if they knew”
Great lads, they told us to stay away from the bar and they’d get the drinks.
Sickening result though. Sickening.
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Except football is intrinsically boring by and large.
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